digital music and the music business

5 Top Characteristics Of Full Time Musicians

This guest post comes from Dave Cool, the Blogger In Residence at musician website and marketing platform Bandzoogle.

I’ve now been involved in the Montreal music scene in some way for 17 years, and have seen many artists and bands come and go. Now that I’m in my 30’s, I’m starting to truly understand what it takes to “make it” as a musician/band. What do I mean by “make it”? I’m not talking about becoming a "star", but simply playing music for a living, which is a place where most of my artist friends want to get to. While reflecting on this, I realized that the artists that were finally able to make a living playing music had some common traits:

5 Top Characteristics Of Full Time Musicians

1. They work (very) hard

The artists and bands that I know that are making a full-time living are some of the hardest working people I know. They hustle every day and work long hours, evenings, weekends, whatever it takes to get the job done and bring in the income they need to survive. Most bands dream of quitting their day job to do music full-time, but some don’t realize that it is a job to be a full-time musician, and you might end up working harder and longer than any day job out there, but the reward will be to do what you love for a living.

2. They love what they’re doing

To make it as a full-time musician, you have to eat, breath and sleep music each and every day. In order to do this, you have to truly love what you are doing and be extremely passionate about it. It’s not always going to be glamorous, and most often it’s going to be a lot of hard work. When you’re on tour for weeks at a time, driving long hours cramped in a van, sleeping on floors and barely making enough money to eat, you really need to love what you’re doing to get through those tough experiences and breakthrough to the other side when the money does start to come in.

3. It’s not about the money

Speaking of money, I don’t know a single full-time artist that is playing music simply for the money. They have a passion for writing/performing/recording music, and they take their art and their craft seriously. It’s all they know and it’s all they want to do. Money is secondary, and when it comes, it’s simply a by-product of the work they are putting in.

Don’t get me wrong, although it’s not about the money for these artists, they do have a business sense, which is extremely important. They know how to manage their finances and put a value to the work they are doing.

4. They have support

Being a DIY artist doesn’t mean you have to or should do it all on your own. Derek Sivers, the Founder of CD Baby, wrote a great blog post talking about this subject: http://sivers.org/diy

Essentially, Derek says that DIY shouldn’t mean Do-It-ALL-Yourself, but instead should mean Decide-It-Yourself. This is so true, and all the artists I know who are making a full-time living have some kind of support team in place, either a manager, agent, small label or assistant to help them with their career.

They didn’t necessarily start out with these people in place, but over time they developed a team to help them manage their careers. In some cases they are life partners, sometimes close friends, but more often it's a professional manager and/or agent who got on board once they reached a certain level in their career development.

5. They don’t give up

And last but not least, they simply don’t give up. I can’t tell you how many artists and bands I’ve known that after 1 or 2 albums they simply pack it in because they didn’t “make it”. This especially seems to happen after a few tours. Being on the road can be a difficult experience for most people, which goes back to having to really love what you’re doing to get through those moments.

The artists I know that are now making a living full-time from their music just stuck to it, through thick and thin. A gig falls through? They find another one. A band member quits? They replace them. They just keep going no matter what obstacles they have in front of them. This is all they know, and they don’t make any back-up plans.

One final thing I’ll say on this subject is that it often took these artists years to get to the point of making a full-time living from music, usually 7-10 years. Most “overnight successes” are years in the making, and nowhere is this truer than in the music industry.

Remember, The Beatles spent years performing 8-hour sets, 7 days a week in Germany before breaking into the American market.

Author Malcolm Gladwell talks about this story and the “10,000 Hour Rule” in his book "The Outliers". Here’s a video describing the 10,000 Hour Rule:

Another example of the 10,000 Hour Rule in the music industry, this time about Fleetwood Mac:

Comments

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Great post, Dave!

"This is all they know, and they don’t make any back-up plans." The first part of this sentence actually makes me weepy. It's so very true.

Sure, we artists have other skills... many "marketable" skills, you have to have them in order to pull off building an independent career. But personally I feel incapable of applying those skills to anything outside of music. I know from working in various non-music related jobs over the years that I do not function well unless I am actively creating music or working on something in support of my music. By this I mean I actually get depressed from it. I would say I have a compulsion to create.

Right? I was just having a conversation about this. When you choose to go into this field you are willingly deciding to go in a differnent direction then virtually everyone else. A few years ago almost all of my friends decided to go to college to get a BA. I never even considerd that an option. I attended MI for 15 months for Guitar and Independent Artist Production and here I am 3 years later, my friends all still in school, with my own business, a job where i am involved with music everyday and the landscape to continue to grow. I never stop working, but I coulnd't be happier.

My question is at what expense did they choose to go to university? Everyone I know has another year if not more of school before they even start applying for jobs. Their choice to go to a "real" college rather than explore what they really want to do in todays world is no more secure then my decision not to.

Thanks for this most excellent post. I think the most important advice on this post is the advice of not giving up. I think that is key as I've spoken to several musicians who are very talented but because they are not talented in business end up going broke and giving up and going back to work doing something they don't love and that's a shame. Because they are just at the brink at making it bigger than before but because they gave up on their music career they gave up the success they could have had. This article does a good job at mentioning not giving up. Thanks for that!

This is absolutely the best advice I have seen on this topic. You are spot on! Thanks for sharing. I think it will help a lot of bands out and help them decide if they have the commitment to do this or if it is just a "hobby" that they hope will succeed. Not everyone realizes that being a "rock star" and having that life took enormous devotion and incredible work before it happened. It actually looks to me like it is really not such a glamourous life for a very long time. It makes me appreciate the bands that stick it out even more though because I see what they went through to get there.

Thanks Dave. As a 30 yr veteran of the music industry in Nashville, I wish every young aspiring artist/professional would read this! We live in an American Idol culture that is nowhere near reality. Those kids NEVER paid any dues. The true reality is that most "overnight success" stories belie the fact that there were many lean years of uncompensated effort and devotion paid to get there.
Great post!

I work longer and harder as a musician now than when I was an accountant, but it is more satisfying, something I really love doing. Music as a career is more challenging - creating music, finding a market and staying in it. It allows us to grow as a person and faced with the challenges we can also tap into our talents & skills other than music which we did not know we even had in us.

Interesting to read the comments here. While it's true that you can't succeed without hard work, it's also true that hard work does not in any way guarantee financial success, espcially in the arts. Notice that I said financial success. Artistic success is a different story; hard work and talent can usually produce artistic success. John Cage never made much money, and for most of his career made very little, but he's one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Financial success in the arts is in many ways a crapshoot, or perhaps a lottery, meaning that either way it's a big gamble. All of which I suppose is another way of saying that you really do have to love it, because in the end that's all you may have.

Great reminders. One of my lowest "what am I doing?" points came after a tour that had high expectations. Helpful to know I'm not the only one. But I did keep going cuz I coudln't now.
And I have many moments lately as I'm preparing to record again where I look at how "long ago" I wrote a song and feel bad "nothing" came of it. But the feeling I have reviewing it, loving it, can outshadow that negative stuff, if I let it. Then,I tell myself "at least put it out any which way you can!"

Great post Dave! To readers, I would highly recommend reading "The Dip" by Seth Godin if you haven't already as it relates to #5 & has helped me along the way. Am also reading "Outliers" at the moment.